| Guest
Users
Guest
Users
Resources
Guest
Users
You
can choose whether or not guest users can get into your site or
not. Go to the Control Panel > User Management
> Guest users. The checkbox at the top turns on and
off guest access. If you turn guest access off, you won't see
a Guest Access button on the login screens. If they try
to go to an internal Web Crossing URL they'll be shown a login screen
without a Guest Access button, whether or not you have
the show a login screen once to all users option checked
in the Control Panel > Login settings.
If you
want to turn on or off the line at the top of the screen that
says "you have guest access...." (with links to either
register or log in), enable or disable the checkbox on the Control
Panel > Customizing > General Settings under Presentation.
If you
do allow guest users in, you can choose how much you let them
do. You set guest access on a global, site-wide basis in
the Control Panel > User Management >
Guest users pane.
You
can set more restrictive guest access on a discussion-by-discussion
or folder-by-folder basis via the Access
List for each item. If you try to create less restrictive
guest privileges via an Access List, the list will update
as if you have successfully done so, but if you enter as a guest
you'll see that the privileges you actually have have been determined
by the more restrictive settings that you set in the Sysop Control
Panel. See Access Lists for more
information on setting guest privileges via access lists.
Via
the Control Panel > User Management >
Guest users pane, you can set guest access to:
- read
only
- read
and post
- add
discussions, links, or folders
- edit
existing items (that aren't their own)
- delete
existing items (that aren't their own)
Guest
users with privileges to post can always delete their own messages
until they are logged out (i.e. have been inactive for the automatic
logout time). They can delete discussions that they have added,
until the first message is posted to it; and they can delete folders
that they have added, until the first subfolder or discussion
is added to it.
Figure
1 - Screenshot from the Guest User pane of the Sysop Control Panel
Top
Level: Checking the Top-level folder is read-only for guest
users box doesn't removes the Add... buttons and the
postbox from the top level screen and the discussions which live
there, but it does force the user to register before his or her
post goes through. However, if you also set the checkbox for Top-level
folder is read-only for registered users in the Control
Panel > User Management > Registered users pane,
it will remove the Add... buttons from the top-level screen
for both guests and registered users, because the guest user wouldn't
be allowed to post even if he or she did register.
"New":
Since Web Crossing can't track what guest users have read and
haven't read from one session to the next, this setting determines
how long "old" posts are considered "new"
for guests. The default, 168 hours, equals one week.
The
best way to understand what each of these settings does is to
experiment with the various combinations of Guest and Registered
User access in both the Control Panel
and in the Access Lists for the
area in question, and then try to log in as a guest and see what
you are allowed to do.
Note
that you may have to quit or exit your browser to enter as a guest,
if you're already logged in as sysop or some other user. Or install
a Logout Macro.
| Note:
If you are running a public site it is often convenient to
leave Guest Access "on" and then restrict guest access with
the control panel or by using access lists for folders. If
Guest Access is off, it is not possible to use some features,
such as anonymous chat, which you may want to allow. Also,
if you are mirroring NNTP newsgroups, servers will not be
able to connect unless Guest Access is allowed. |
Resources
Web
Crossing FAQ:
Sysop
Control Panel
- User
Management
- Guest
users
- Registered
users
- Register
(add) a user
- Set
a user's preferences (manually validate a user)
- Customize
- General
Settings (objectionable word list for moderated posts)
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